Watchmen Demo

I guess "Who plays the Playmen" wouldn't have the same impact. It could boost sales by 600% though.

In a nutshell, this is what happened after I decided to try out the Watchmen Demo:

Downloaded it. Installed it. Executed it. Played it? No, that’s not how these things work, you know. There has to be some kind of hurdle, some kind of technical problem, otherwise this wouldn’t be a mainstream PC game demo.

So, what was the technical error? My video-card doesn’t seem to have the ultimate shader videowatchamatcha thingy, and therefore I can’t play it. Even on the lowest possible graphical settings. Um… what?

So I uninstalled it and proceeded to write this entry. I guess they don’t want my money then. That seems to be a very solid business plan if you ask me. Yep, nothing wrong with that. They are most definitely are not denying money from possible customers. They certainly have the broadest demographic possible by excluding 99.9% of the PC market. All those other people? Nah, they are not their audience, they don’t deserve it. They are not the big boys, they can’t use 100 dollar bills as toilet paper. Those wusses.

Although to be fair, I wouldn’t give this game so much as a thought, much less my money. So I am out of their demographic of drooling zombies after all. I just wanted to see how the thing played, because I read so many abysmal reviews about it. Seems counter-intuitive doesn’t it? Not so much when you consider that I want to learn from other developer’s mistakes. Studying successes gets boring from time to time. Studying worthless pieces of stupidity doesn’t help much though, so I hoped that this game would fall somewhere in the middle.

*sigh* How could you let a group of babies go surfing? Even if they are superheroes, there's no excuse. If you don't start putting limits on them now they'll get screwed up, and next thing you know, they start lighting innocent people on fire and pirating videogames.

It turned out to be literally unplayable, saving itself from my game design scalpel and my rant’s meat tenderizer, loosing nothing in the process given that I wouldn’t buy the game in the first place. In fact, the less people analyze and review the thing, the more people will probably buy it, while thinking to themselves such contemplative thoughts as “Ooohhh, shiny!”.

….

Well played Warner Bros. and Deadline Games, well played.

As a side note: At least the developers have the decency to offer me the graphical settings before jumping into the game. Meaning that we can say with all certainty that this game did something right. That is, of course, if the final game retains this feature. I wouldn’t discard such an idiotic move, since there’s no roof for stupidity.

As another side note: Sorry if I’m being a little too spicy, it’s been a bad day.